Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Politically Correct.

I'm not politically correct, not even to the smallest degree. I have radical opinions against religious organizations, feel that free speech in most cases should remain free speech, and do feel that an opinion on anything should be a fundamental right. Even if those opinions are moronic.

Bigotry, and marginalization towards groups has always occurred in history. In fact it is what the anthropological world would call a consistent cross cultural phenomena. Humans have been singling out other humans since we gained the proper sentience to make sense of the idea of groups.

Usually these forms of opinion are formed through social constructs and are thrown out into the cultural arena for the individual to decide upon. Unfortunately in most cases individuals are weak, spineless creatures, and any case of independent thought is either rare... or nonexistent. This is fine, there will always be puppets to the cultural frame works, in fact I feel they are needed to keep the culture going as we know it... but that's for another blog.

Bigotry, Racism, Gender Bashing, what ever the case. In a fundamental sense are bad, they hinder on individual rights cause stereotypes and unnecessary tension between groups. In a larger sense, most cultural make ups are entirely reliant upon being politically incorrect. I know what you're thinking now..."But Mr. Slander, our government allows different groups to express their cultures openly in my country." Touche person I've never met! But government influence does not a culture make.

Lets look at the wider spectrum of the situation, I'll pick on the media because they are easy to pick on. In a country such as the United States, the government does have many sanctions which protect individuals and allow them to practice elements of their own cultures (well within the laws of the country). This is an entirely good thing, it allows for freedoms. However, in the case of the media these freedoms tend to become blurred.

There is an element in American culture (its found in most cultures but I'm dealing with them at the moment, settle down!) which likes to marginalize what's different. The news loves to demonize the cultural practices of other countries, it may be major or minor, but they look at the outside world with a extreme guise of ethnocentrism. Because of this blatant slant presented by the media individuals in the country itself take on this same form of ethnocentrism and apply it to every day life, which in turn promotes bigotry and all the elements described before.

Suddenly the practice of an individual expressing an element of their native culture, or religion, or etc becomes something of a taboo because the media (or other elements of the culture) have presented them to be wrong, bad, false... what ever.

True Politically Correctness is unattainable, cultures are just too ethnocentric to allow it. Governments should have a responsibility to protect people of other cultural background, and alternative beliefs/life styles... but they also should infringe upon free speech of other citizens in doing so. There are a lot of elements at work here to decipher through. There are great arguments for each side of this coin.

To me it seems like authoritative roles should take a slightly more gentle approach towards this whole idea of being politically correct. Cultural outlets, like the media, should focus more on being fair to other cultures and acknowledge they are ethnocentric instead of automatically demonizing everything which doesn't jive with "their values".

Just something I have been thinking about and discussing a lot and I thought I would share some thoughts here. Most people take for granted that their own opinions are hugely impacted on by the bombarding of cultural influences. Someone who doesn't sift through the bias, ethnocentrism, and other forms of "persuasion" literally loses their free will in a sense because their mind has already been made up for them by the predominate forces in a culture.

1 comment:

The best part, meaning the truest part of this post is when you say...

True Politically Correctness is unattainable, cultures are just too ethnocentric to allow it. Governments should have a responsibility to protect people of other cultural background, and alternative beliefs/life styles... but they also should infringe upon free speech of other citizens in doing so.

You hit the nail on the head there. We need real freedom. And we also need to have people who will think on their own and just follow like mindless sheep.

People should stand for what they believe in. If they don't, they are considered weak in my eyes and should be castrated or have their heads cut off and put on posts... Just like the good ol' days!

My apologies for not commenting sooner. I've been swallowed up by a debacle I could not escape.